Before I left New York I shipped 5 boxes of things from our apartment that we would need in LA. My mom and I packed up the bathroom, kitchen and most of the bedroom into 7 boxes (we didn't send the 2 boxes of books right away after deeming them too heavy to get to the post office). The boxes weren't terribly heavy save for one large box that held 95% of the kitchen's contents. I'm pretty weak and if I could lift them with general ease I assumed they weren't particularly heavy.
Getting the boxes to the post office however was quite another story. My parents don't have a car but the post office was only 10 blocks away. The biggest obstacle was getting them down the stairs. We lived in a 6 floor walk-up and while we had a dolly, it was definitely a challenge. The lip on the dolly wasn't long enough to hold the entire length of the box and with the weight of the boxes and the pressure of taking them down all of those stairs, the bottom box was about to split open. So now we had to carry the boxes down the stairs. Luckily a very nice guy carried the heaviest box down the stairs for us. Now we just had to huff all the way back up and get the rest...did I mention that we had less than an hour to get to the post office? Challenge times a million.
Once we got the boxes down the stairs I had to hail a cab. I believe 3 turned me down before one finally agreed. The driver was utterly useless though; he barely helped us load the boxes into the cab. Now at this point we have about 10 minutes to get to the post office. I also got the address wrong but only the cross streets so the driver was able to do a U turn. Somehow we manage to get there at about 5 minutes to 5pm which was the time the post office closed. I didn't have any cash on me to pay the cab driver so I had to run a block and a half to the atm to get money out. Like I literally ran. According to my mom the driver again didn't help her unload the cab but the nice guy who worked in the post office helped her bring the boxes in. We didn't realize that we could have addressed the boxes before we got to the post office so after I quickly did that we started loading them to ship. $184 later, the boxes were on their way. Since I was shipping everything parcel post to save money it was going to take about a week to get to LA.
Fast forward to yesterday. I'd been sitting at home most days waiting for the postal worker to come bring me my boxes. Save for one day. Yesterday there was a knock at the door. It was our nice postal worker; a black woman probably in her 40s. She only had one box which held the pot set my mom had given me. I didn't see anymore boxes and I was worried. She claimed the other boxes to be too heavy (remember that part when I said they weren't that bad? guess I was wrong). She asked if more were coming and I told her that my mom hasn't sent them yet. Her response "I have a feeling I'm not going to like your mom." When I asked about the rest of the boxes she said I'd have to pick them up at the post office. Oh great I thought...this is going to be an adventure. She said that they hold them for about 15 days which would give me plenty of time to figure out how to get them without a car. But I didn't want to wait that long because I'm tired of eating frozen dinners.
So today I was hanging out with my friend Tracy who also just moved back to LA. After a very fun afternoon I begged her to take me to the post office to retrieve my boxes. I told her if she took me I'd buy her wine and make her dinner. People are very willing to help when you offer wine =) The post office worker let us use their dolly to get the boxes to the car and helped me load them. They weren't heavy save for that kitchen box. The biggest problem was that they had taken quite a beating, especially the kitchen box that had split open despite the excessive amount of tape keeping it closed. As we loaded it into the car the box proceeds to fall apart, luckily the contents spilled out into the car. We got them back to my building but the next challenge was getting them into my building, especially since one was now falling apart. Again, luckily for me there were some very nice young men sitting in front of the building to offer to help carry the boxes in for me. I let Tracy go and led the guys into the building. I was just too exhausted from the afternoon to unpack immediately but once I got my second wind I decided to tackle the kitchen.
It wasn't as bad as I thought, mainly because I have more cabinets than I know what to do with. I was more concerned about where to put things so that they were in the most accessible. Because the giant kitchen box was obviously man handled, there were 3 broken glasses. Luckily Jon's beloved train mug made it through. He'll be pleased. Now I just have to tackle the medium sized bathroom box and organize my shoes and I'll be done...that is until the rest of the boxes arrive...
No comments:
Post a Comment